In a hilarious scene from the I Love Lucy episode LA at Last Lucy finds a novel use for a cup of coffee. The cup and saucer are square shaped and the cup handle forms a distinctive ear shaped curve. We now have an ID for the coffee cup thanks to a generous contributor to this blog.
The coffee cups and saucers seen on the show are by Franciscan Ware ( a trade mark of Gladding, McBean & Co ). The Franciscan Tiempo single color line was produced from 1949 – 1954. It featured a squared shape and came in several colors including apricot, yellow,white,grey, lime green, olive green, brown and tan.
This design first appeared in the 1940 Metropolitan range that used a two color pattern by Franciscan Ware designed by Morris B. Sanders in 1940 as an entry for the Metropolitan Museum of Arts 1940 Exhibition of Contemporary American Industrial Arts, and was one of the first “square” dinner sets
The Metropolitan range were colored white inside the cups. The single color design called Tiempo appeared in 1948/49.
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